MaxDB 7.9 ignors sorting?

one of our developers discovered a change of behaviour in 7.9 which he is not used to (coming from 7.6)

Here is his select.

SELECT land1 prdid FROM /prod/fuba UP TO 1 ROWS

INTO (lv_land1, ls_fuba-prdid)

WHERE land1 = iv_land1

OR land1 = space

OR land1 = '*'

ORDER BY land1 DESCENDING.

ENDSELECT.

Hi expects the database to sort countries in descending order. If DE and SPACE are selected the sorting order is ignored. If DE, CH and SPACE is selected, expecting a result of three datasets, the result will be sorted alright.